


Unorthodox Reactions To Alien Stimuli

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Mutantstuck [12]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Homestuck, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, PTSD, marvelstuck, my dumb ass had to look up eddies last name, or something to that effect, revelations about neet! yay!, this isnt how you do therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-05 09:24:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18825811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dave and his siblings try a new line of therapy (which D and Deadpool have no clue they've come up with.) It goes...interestingly?





	1. Chapter 1

Oh god this was a mistake. This was such a big mistake, you fucked up, why the _fuck_ would you think this was a good idea or that you could do it or—

"All right, stop for a minute," Rose says softly. Not to you, though—she's talking to either the scruffy man who's sitting on the edge of the bed and watching you like a hawk in a mangy opossum disguise, or to the motile handful of black goop that's slowly oozing up your jeans and towards your hand. Like, you're pretty sure that the command is meant for the goop, but you have no fucking clue if that alien can hear unless it's in somebody, so—

Nah, nevermind, it stopped before Eddie had time to open his mouth. Which he's doing now, to your probably dismay. "Look, kid, we can try this again another time—" 

"Nuh-uh." _Why_ did you say that. Why. "I'm cool, dude, I'm fine, 's all good, the hyperventilating 'n tensing up like somebody popped me in a deep freeze is like, on the normal menu y'know? No sweat. Like not literally no sweat, there's a shitton of perspiration going on right now but—" 

"You're making him freak out more," Hal points out dryly, adjusting Neet a bit so she's not digging her talons right into the nerve in his wrist. "The talking is normal for him, Eddie; the panicking is..." 

"Expected." Dirk supplies the word, leaning over to bump his hand up behind Neet's legs, basically stealing her from Hal as she steps up. "Left arm?" 

"Yeah, probably a good idea." Your right arm won't take the crow's weight without making you regret trying later; her claws digging into your skin through a layer of fabric is hella calming, enough that you feel a lil' more comfortable with putting your free hand back on your leg, next to the goop. "Okay. Cool. That's totally better." 

"Coming from you, that could mean you're ready to keep going, _or_ that you need to back out." Rose glances over at the digital clock that Dirk has to repair on average twice a week, thanks to his and Hal's electric abilities, then looks back at you. "Sarcasm only works if we can tell you're being sarcastic. You can back out, you know. Desensitization isn't always—" 

"Fuck off." God, you hope that came out less mean than it felt. "Yo, slimy? C'mere." 

Okay, so maybe just grabbing the alien goo isn't the most solid plan, but hey, you're still not all that great at admitting defeat without a valid reason to. Apparently "being on the edge of panic" isn't a valid reason yet. You should probably talk to either Rose or your actual adult therapist about that. 

...you might be running a lil' fast right now, because you have time to think through how you need to work on recognizing and answering your own mental distress instead of just working about physical shit. Hell, you're probably running a _lot_ fast, if you're gonna be honest; the symbiote's fast as, y'know. Your bro was. 

(At least you don't have to correct your mental grammar from present to past now. That's something.) 

Anyway. You grab the goo, it coils around your fingers, you think about mental problems and mutant abilities and how the symbiote is a lot warmer than you remember it being, and right about the time you start trying to synch yourself back up with normal human time, the amount of black on your hand starts to shrink. Well, technically it's not shrinking; that shit's just inside you now. In your blood, about to be in your _brain_...

"Dave, can you give us a status report?" 

Rose's question is just barely enough to snap you out of that line of thought before you get any further. Probably a good thing, considering where it keeps going in the back of your mind. 

(Do _not_ look at that corner of your mind. Just, no.) "I'm great." 

Okay, so you totally deserve the eye-roll she gives you. "How about you give us some details?" 

"Uhh...if it's in my head, it's being pretty damn quiet. Like I—I kinda remember what it felt like last time, before it said anything? Doesn't feel like that." 

"Yes, but how does it feel?" 

"Like I'm freaking out 'cause I can't feel anything other'n me panicking?" 

Eddie raises his hand to get your attention, then points out, "We _did_ have a deal to stay out of your head until you gave us permission, so..." 

Oh. Yeah. That's a thing, but... "Dude, _you're_ not actually in my head too, right?" 

He looks blank for a second. Then his eyes widen as he realizes exactly how he worded it, shaking his head as his face goes red. "That's not—" 

"C'mon, Dave, don't tease him about his alien husband." Hal grins and kicks gently at Eddie's leg. "He's used to being a _they_ ; cut him some slack." 

"Hey, I gotta check." Y'know what, you're actually fine with everyone thinking that was a joke. "But yeah, I guess I'm good with letting it get all up in my head...do I need to tell it that, or...?" 

"It'll hear you," Eddie says, just as that still-familiar voice in the center of your brain speaks up with almost the exact same fucking words. 

_**We hear you, Dave.**_

You jump a fucking mile, enough that both Dirk and Rose automatically reach for you. They pull away when you lean back in the chair, though. 

"Still good," you tell Rose before she can do more than open her mouth. (Yes, even you can tell that your voice is a lil' shaky. No, you don't want to talk about that.) "It's a fuckin' shock, is all." 

_**Sorry. Want us out again?**_

"No, but keep talking. And _don't_ touch anything in there, alright?" Honestly, you'd prefer the panic attack that might be coming to having the symbiote make any adjustments to your brain chemistry. Listening to it talk is weird, yeah, partly because the damn thing sounds different inside your head than it does coming from Eddie—less dragging of sibilants, not as deep or distorted—

_**We use your thoughts to speak to you. Sounds like you in your head, if we were you. Or if you were us.**_

"Did you know you're making zero sense?" 

_**That's because you're a human.**_

"Excuse you, I'm a _mutant._ " 

_**Still human.**_

"Hey, you wanna fuckin' go?" 

For a second you get a flash of the symbiote's confusion at that barely-serious offer. Hella weird. _**Go? Leave? Out?**_

"Nah. More like 'fight me' than 'get out,' y'know? Like I see where the mix up comes from but—" 

"Love, do _not_ fight the teenager you're bonded with," Eddie interjects before you can get any further. "I don't give a fuck what he says, that's an awful idea—" 

"Language," Dirk murmurs. You're honestly jealous of that deadpan, since you know he's just teasing/distracting Eddie...

_**Dave? Dave Dave Dave.**_

"Dude, it takes exactly one repetition to get me focused on you. Doesn't even have to be my name. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a _word_ —" 

_**Eddie takes more.**_

"Well, he actually _is_ a human. Plus he's not scared to fucking death of goddamn telepaths." And you just said that out loud. And Rose is looking at you with faint but obvious surprise and interest, since she hasn't actually managed to get you to say the s-word in any of her unlicensed therapy sessions. "Rose. No." 

"We'll discuss it later." 

"Nope, we won't. Hey Venom, you did have, like, an actual thing you wanted here?" 

_**Let us talk to Eddie.**_

"Uh...what?" 

_**Permission?**_

"Do I actually need to—" 

_**Eddie said we had to keep the promise to ask permission before we do anything with you.**_

"Uhhhh..." Shit. Fuck. You knew it, you fucking knew it, it's only not controlling you because of a relatively meaningless little thing like a goddamn promise...Bro was a fucking bastard but what he taught you with Cal was true—letting people, letting _things_ in your head means you lose your autonomy, you get frozen and vulnerable and—

The symbiote squeaks, but (thankfully) only in your head. Before you can even open your mouth to ask the damn thing what the fuck, you actually feel it retreat from your mind. Somehow, that's not reassuring. 

The little glimpse of black you get out of the corner of your eye is also not fucking reassuring. In fact, it's downright terrifying, and you react to fear the way you've been trained to since you were seven years old—you grit your teeth against whatever the unknown substance on you is gonna do, and you swing that arm in a sharp arc to fling the shit off. 

It's your bad arm. It hurts like hell. Also, the symbiote does go flying, but Neet's alarmed by your sudden movement and interested in the airborne item, which adds up to her cawing and taking flight, rising _just_ high enough to dive down and snag the alien before it can hit the ground. 

Eddie yells something that's probably some permutation of "no." So...pretty much the same thing you yell. Like, you're not really sure what the fuck you actually say, but your throat suddenly hurts and what the hell else _would_ you say? You're definitely feeling a pretty fucking negative emotion right now, seeing your goddamn crow grab that _thing_.

Neet swoops over Dirk's head and lands on the desk, bending over to peck curiously at the black goo wound around her foot. Eddie cries out in obvious dismay, the symbiote makes a nearly supersonic squeak and disappears down Neet's gullet at least partially under its own power, and the _only_ reason you don't grab her and do your damnedest to shake the alien out of her is that Hal tackles you to the floor halfway. 

(He lands on top of you, with your arm pinned under both his and your own weight. That's gonna hurt when the adrenaline wears off. Actually, it hurts now. Dammit.) 

"Get the fuck _off_ —" Hey, apparently Hal doesn't know quite as many tricks to hold someone down as you've been through with Bro, because flipping over to end up on top of _him_ is barely even a challenge. Unfortunately, you manage it just in time to look up and see Neet puff her feathers up and screech in outrage, and then just...

She fucking _disappears._ Nothings left, not even a feather. One second a whole-ass crow is perched there, then there's _nothing._

Well, not quite nothing. The goop's left behind, momentarily airborne. It hits the desk with a wet _splat_ , flattening out and making more high-pitched noises for a second before zooming straight off the desk like a snapped rubber band, heading for Eddie like he's a fucking homing beacon. 

He grabs it, it sinks into his skin, Hal mumbles something unintelligible into the carpet because you _are_ kind of kneeling on his neck, and whatever part of your nervous system is in charge of your occasional checkouts from reality decides that now is a _great_ time for another one. 

(It really isn't, but you don't actually have a say in the matter. At some level, you're just along for the ride.)


	2. Chapter 2

You lose some time there. Not like, hours, but definitely at least five minutes or so; when you blink and shake your head at the sharp lil' spark of pain digging into the side of your head and intruding on the bigger pulses from your much-abused arm, you notice a couple of new developments.

One, you're on the floor, with your back against the wall. Two walls, technically, since you've backed yourself up into the corner—hey, it's pretty damn defensible, okay? Anyway, you're sitting on the floor with your shoulders pressed hard into the walls, your bad arm tucked across your chest with your other one crossed over it like that's gonna help protect you at all. 

Actually, that might be one factor in how much pain you're in right now. This isn't exactly the best position to put that arm in. However, you're not currently up for _un_ crossing your arms, so...

Point two. Four whole people are crouched around you in a loose semicircle (or whatever the fuck a quarter of a circle's called), watching you with various levels of obvious concern. In order from least to most obviously worried, it's probably Dirk, Rose, Hal, and Eddie. Eddie looks super fucking concerned. Someone should probably tell him you're gonna be fine. 

Wait, you could do that. You probably should do that. 

Or you could keep listing new developments. That sounds like fun. You're gonna do _that_. 

What point were you on? Oh yeah, three. The symbiote is nowhere in sight. That's not really anything new; why the fuck would it be in sight? It fucked up your crow—

Your crow. _Fuck_. Neet. 

You open your mouth to start handing out meaningless threats—Vemon can kick your ass with one hand tied behind their back, but _fuck_! They fucking _vaporized_ a member of your goddamn family, she's still as much family as Dirk or Hal are even if she is a bird, okay—

Neet caws next to your ear. Then she _pecks_ your ear. Again. You may actually be bleeding right now. "Wait—what the fuck?" 

There's a collective sigh of relief from everyone in the room other than Neet, but it's Dirk that speaks first. "Are you okay?"

"Did I fucking _hallucinate_?" Neet caws at something in the way you ask that; you just barely grab her off your shoulder in time to save your ear from yet another peck. She settles for pecking your left hand instead, more gently than usual, and settles in the crook of your arm when you let go of her. "She—okay, look, it's stupid but I saw her disappear, I swear I did—" 

"Don't worry, we all saw it." Rose shifts closer, sitting down next to you and reaching over to brush Neet's tailfeathers with the tips of her fingers. You're mildly surprised when she turns that into (carefully) patting your shoulder; damn, you must seem extra fucked right now. "How are you, though? You—" 

"Excuse me, Rose, but my fucking mental state can go on the back burner for one goddamn minute while _someone_ tells me how my _crow_ learned to fucking _teleport_!" Are you being unreasonable, loud, and stubborn? Yes. Will that get you the results you want? Probably not, but you're not about to stop. "Like is this a fucking alien thing? 'Oh, sorry Dave, we forgot to tell you about the side effects of swallowing black slime! You might experience a tickling sensation in your amygdala, have alien babies, or fucking _teleport_!'" 

Eddie makes a stifled noise that's probably a laugh. He shuts up pretty quick when you glare at him, though. "No alien babies. What the fuck is an amygdala?" 

"Do I look like I know what the hell I'm talking about?" Oookay, ease off on the anger towards the guy; you _did_ just yeet the alien slime that he may or may not be married to across the room. Also your crow ate it. Or something. "Forget the amygdala thing—I wanna talk to Venom." 

"As in _us_ , or just the symbiote, or—" 

"Whoever knows what the fuck's going on!" You're not doing great with the calming down thing. Still, it's kind of an improvement; you're more irritated than scared this time. "Gimme the slime—can I have the slime?"

"No." Ooh, you got unity from Hal _and_ Rose. Nice. Unfortunately, that means that Eddie glances between the two of them, looks back at you and shrugs, and sits back on his heels. 

Instead of producing the ball of alien goo from wherever it squirms out of him from, Eddie closes his eyes and cocks his head sharply to one side, far and hard enough to make his neck crack. You actually _hear_ that, just barely; the weird wet noises of the symbiote goo wrapping around him and forming a new skin pretty much covers it up. 

" _Thisss worksss better._ " 

"It does fucking not—" 

" _Doesss too. We hhhad an idea, Davvve—_ "

Now how the fuck can they hiss your name? There's not even a single sibilant in it. Whatever; you have bigger fish to fry. "Nope. No ideas. What the hell did you do to Nietzsche?" 

" _Nothhhhing!_ " You're not really sure how they manage to convey that they're offended by the suggestion, since the main facial expression you can get here is _about to eat your face_. Maybe it's something about the body language. Yeah, that's gotta be it. " _Ssshhhe did it—didn't care fffor bonding withhh usss. Ssstuck-up elitissst..._ " 

"Okay, I'm not sure what planet you've been on recently or what kind of freaky birds they have, but around here crows _don't_ teleport, Venom." 

" _Not a crow._ " 

"She is too!" Oh, here comes a lil' bit of panic. What if she's _not_ a crow? What if she's, like, a mutant who's got shapeshifting powers and is here to assassinate D or kidnap Hal or Dirk or—okay yep let's not do that right now, you're gonna hyperventilate. You're doing it now actually. Shit. 

Venom cocks their slimy head, then scooches close enough to reach out and boop the top of Neet's head with one long finger. She pecks them for it. " _Ffflerken._ " 

It takes you a good five seconds to process that as an actual word, not just one of the nonsensical noises that Venom tends to make every now and then. The problem is, you have no clue what that word means. "...flerken." 

"Flerken?" Hal repeats curiously, and both Dirk and Rose pull phones out of their pockets to start looking it up. Nice to know that it's not just you that's confused. 

You go back to stroking Neet's feathers and glaring at Venom. Maybe that'll tip them off that you want more info. 

Apparently it doesn't, because after maybe thirty seconds Rose looks up and announces, "I can't find anything on that—" 

"I can." Dirk, on the other hand, doesn't look up. "...kind of. I hate to say this, but Hal, can I get a hand hacking into this?" 

"Say please." 

"How about, 'fuck you?'" 

"Close enough." Hal grins and gets to his feet, nudging Dirk with one foot until he moves enough to allow access to the desk chair. The laptop turns itself on before he can actually touch it, which is pretty much par for the course at this point.

Venom blinks, which is something you didn't actually know they could _do_. Hell, until right now you weren't totally sure they actually had eyes. Maybe it's an Eddie thing, though, because a second later the slick blackness retreats, leaving him crouching there with the usual baffled look on his face. "Wait. What are you trying to get into that has info on—" 

"No clue, but we're in now!" Hal leans back to give you a cheerful smile, then focuses on the screen again. "Damn, Dirk, you're slipping; I _know_ we've broken into this particular branch of the CIA before—" 

"Of the _what_?" Poor Eddie. He's gonna self destruct at some point. 

Especially since no one's paying any attention to his concern. Like, Dirk still doesn't look up. "Number one, I'm on my phone, dumbass. Number two, don't tell me this shit isn't under some _exceptional_ wraps." 

"If you two don't stop stalling and tell me what the hell a flerken is, I'm gonna—" 

"It's an alien," Rose says before you can finish that threat, rolling her eyes as Dirk groans and leans away so she can't keep reading off her screen. "Really, Dirk? There's four sentences there, and three of them are bureaucratic doublespeak." 

"An alien." You look down at Neet; from her nest between your arm and your body, she looks back up at you. Then she opens her beak and lets out a very small croak, like that's gonna unconfuse you. "Hey, what the fuck? I saw you fuckin' _hatch—_ " 

"Flerken are—" Eddie shakes his head impatiently, eyes going vague for a second before he huffs, closing his eyes as the symbiote flows over him again. " _Ssstarbound ssshhhapessshhhiftersss. Sssometimesss they breed with localsss._ " 

Again, you have to puzzle at that sentence for a second to get past the rough hissing. "Okay just a suggestion, but next time that the word has more than two S's, just let Eddie say it." 

" _Sssorry._ " (They don't look sorry. It's hard to tell, what with the excessive teeth, but you think they're grinning.) " _Mossst of hhher ancccessstorsss are crowsss, if that hhhelpsss?_ " 

"...no, not really." Hoo, boy. Is it a bad thing that this is somehow less of a shock than finding out that your family tends to turn up with weirdass mutant powers? You feel like it's a bad thing. "Can she, like...talk, or anything?" 

" _Technically_ any crow can be taught to speak with a high degree of language awareness—" 

"Zip it, Rose. I'm asking the guy who was in her head." 

Venom shrugs. " _Ssshhhe'sss a crow._ " 

"...right. So just teleporting, and normal corvid fuckery." Maybe this explains a couple things, actually. You're not that into examining which ones right now, though. "Hey, didn't you say you had an idea about something else?" 

Venom makes a noise resembling a shuriken dropped in an icemaker, and rolls their head in a combination of nodding and shaking it. " _Eddie sssaysss no._ " 

Well that's an evasion if you ever heard one. "And you say..." 

" _We want to fixxx your arm._ " Venom snaps their mouth shut and straightens up a bit; you're guessing that's their equivalent of a concerned frown. " _Davvve?_ " 

Okay, so you did just wince and hunch down, trying to curl around your bad arm; even if you weren't self-aware enough to know exactly how threatened you're acting, Neet's surprised croon would probably tip you off. Or maybe it'd be the look on Rose's face, or the fact that Dirk's abandoned his perusal of classified documents. 

Well, they can all just fucking wait. You give Hal an apologetic look as he opens his mouth to ask a question you're not all that interested in answering, and mentally grab time with both hands, dragging it to a stop so you can maybe have enough space to examine why the idea of not being damaged in this particular way feels like a kick to the gut.


	3. Chapter 3

Your plan fails miserably...mostly because you get just enough time in your version of timeout for Dirk to realize that you're stretching time for yourself, lean over and hit you with an almost gentle jolt of electricity. For him, that's maybe ten seconds; for you it's about three minutes, wholly spent getting yourself calmed down. You probably should have changed the ratio in your favor when you saw him start to move, honestly...

Eh, you were distracted. Now you're even _more_ distracted; your left arm's tingling from the shock and Neet's screeching indignantly; she must've caught a bit of the charge through her contact with you.

You're tempted to just let her peck Dirk to death, but that'll be the wrong kind of distraction for everyone else. Plus, you know Rose; she's not gonna let you opt out of the coming talk that easy. "Uncalled for, bro." 

"Rose made me do it." When you give him a skeptical look—she might've had time to notice you were out of synch, but she _so_ didn't have time to tell him anything—Dirk holds his hands up in surrender, giving you a brief glimpse of a blue-and-grey webpage on his phone. "She _would have_ made me." 

"I would." 

"Aight, you get a pardon this time, but jeez, man." Neet quiets when you dig your fingers into that spot between her wings that she loves to have scratched; when she relaxes a little, you tuck her back between your arm and your body. "...okay." 

" _We can't tell ifff that'sss a yesss or a no—_ " Venom starts. Then they stop, when you give them an apologetic look.

"Gimme a minute, dude—the 'okay' was for Rose. Like, a green light on all the shit we both know she's just _dyin'_ to ask." 

Rose cocks her head as you finish that sentence; damn, she caught your slip there. Look, you've managed to lose just about all of the Texas verbal quirks in the time you've been in New York...unless you're thinking about the place you picked those quirks up in. Which you are, obviously. Goddamnit, stop thinking about that and focus on Rose. 

"Why do you need to hesitate about that answer, Dave?" She keeps her tone level, but not really as clinical as she tends to get when she's talking Dirk or Hal (or even Wade) through something; multiple failed pseudotherapy sessions have shown that you react best to gentleness. "Is this internal or external reasoning?" 

Well, the first question is too damn open-ended for you to navigate right now, and the second... "Gimme the definition of those two?" 

" _Internal_ would be if you're not sure you want to go through with this idea because of some mental issue with the process itself—" 

"What the fuck _else_ would it be?" 

" _Not trusssting usss. Fffear._ " 

"Wh—" Wait, take a second and look at that though. _Do_ you trust Venom? You're pretty sure you trust Eddie; Wade trusts him, after all, not only with his own welfare but with _yours_ as well, and if you've learned one thing about Deadpool it's that he won't let you get hurt. Not knowingly, not willingly, not without kicking ass as soon as he finds out. And yeah, the symbiote's fucked you up before, but it sure hasn't ever acted maliciously, and the part of your mind that isn't totally fucking ruled by memories of Bro's warnings and Cal's fuckery knows that there's no real chance it ever will. 

Venom growls softly. Somehow, that comes across as a inquisitive sound. You're still not sure how they do that. 

"I trust you." You huff and run your left hand through your hair, trying to work out what the words you want to say need to be. "Like. Until you're in my head, I trust you. Then everything kinda goes on autopilot—sorry, dude, but that shit's literally automated at this point—" 

"So you're afraid of bonding with the symbiote again," Rose interrupts before you can go off on any more of a tangent than you've already accomplished. "I'm not sure what they were planning, but I'm sure they don't _need_ to occupy your mind to—" 

...Venom's already shaking their head. " _We'd need to block pain reccceptorsss ifff we're going to break hisss arm again._ " 

"Wait, if you're gonna _what_?" This is their big idea? Really? "You do know I've had that fuckin' arm broke already, right? It's what got me _into_ this mess—" 

" _We know, trussst usss—those bonesss are a messss, it'sss disssgusssting that sssomeone would leave their offfffssspring like that._ " The mouthful of pale fangs seems to actually lengthen, as they grimace. Damn, that's creepy. " _We'd be quiet, in you. Make sssure nothing hhhurtsss while Eddie broke your arm, make sssure it sssetsss ssstraight and you hhhealed right this time._ " 

"It can't be that fucking easy." It _can't._ If it was that easy, how...why...

"Shit, Dave..." Hal slides off the desk chair and scoots over to sit beside you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and reaching for your face with his free hand. Honestly, if it was anyone else you'd probably reflexively smack that hand away, but Hal's different, for some reason, and you manage not to move (other than closing your eyes for the second that he's actually touching your cheek.) 

Everything's a lil' blurry when you open your eyes again. Kind of a "what the fuck?" moment, until you see that there's traces of wetness on Hal's fingertips. 

"Oh. Fuck." Well, _that's_ certainly not something you like doing in public. Although you guess crying in your own fucking room, with your own fucking family ain't exactly the same as an actual public meltdown. Still... "Sorry." 

"Why?" Rose asks, and she's probably asking for you to examine why you feel like you need to be sorry but nah, you'd rather address literally anything else. 

The fact that you're leaning against Hal and pulling off your shades to wipe at your eyes with the sleeve of your shirt gives you a perfect redirection. "...y'know, he was f-fuckin' _nice_ when he was fixin' broken bones. Like he was _sorry._ Like he wanted to make sure everything was gonna be okay, like it wasn't my fucking fault for once in my goddamn life—" 

"None of it was ever your fault," Dirk points out, calmly enough that you know he's unreasonably furious with a dead man. 

"It was to him." Dammit, you don't know if you know how to articulate this either. "I know it's—that shit wasn't on me, y'all tell me that all the time and I _know_ , but how he saw shit? It _was_ my fault, and until I wasn't stuck in his lil' stupid circle of how shit was it _was_ my fault almost all the time unless he—he dropped it. Like when he was faking for somebody, or—when he was fixing my _goddamn_ arm." Aw, shit, you're actually doing worse on the face leaking front; at this point the best course is to just put your shades back on and sniffle through it, even if that means you're basically blind for the moment. "Seems ki—kinda sucky that he fucked it up that bad. Even if it was an accident." 

Damn, you don't like the noise that comes out of Venom at all. It's kind of a screech and kind of a snarl, and Hal jerks against you in surprise at the sound of it. " _Acccident doesssn't cover thisss. Negligenccce. Worssse than negligenccce_." 

God, you hate the fact that you can totally believe that Bro would fuck up your then-dominant hand on purpose. Like, maybe he didn't mean for it to be permanent, but he's been trying to train you to be able to work with either since you were old enough to write your name; this is horrible and plausible and suddenly the memories of him speaking almost gently as you gasped at the pain in the arm he was wrapping aren't just colored with guilt and longing, they're overlaid with some emotion that you're not really sure how to name. Is "betrayal" an emotion? You know disgust is. 

"Okay, come on," Hal murmurs as you feel your breath hitch in your chest, shooing Neet off your lap so he can drag you around to where you're facing him, "come on, come here, it's okay..." 

Leaning forward and shoving your face into his chest is a relief, even though he has to pull you off again for a second so he can retrieve your shades before you twist the frames out of shape again. That's only a second, though, and then you can go right back to crying into Hal's shirt with his arms wrapped around you, listening to him repeat the same soothing shit until it doesn't mean a goddamn thing, until it blends in with the tick-tick-tick of the watch on your wrist. 

Or maybe the ticking's in your head, at this point. You're pretty sure you technicality shouldn't be able to hear something that soft and that far removed from your ears as clearly as you do, and you're _totally_ sure that you shouldn't be able to count the ticks well enough to know that it's four minutes and thirteen seconds before you pull back from Hal, look over his shoulder at Venom, and say, "Fuck it. We're doing this, man."

" _...we're not really a man._ " 

"We're making this happen," Dirk says automatically as Venom expresses their confusion. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Rose smacks him, and he shakes his head and continues, "No, we're not, that doesn't count as a vote in favor of this plan—" 

"Who says this is a democracy? My body, my choice, and I choose to have the slime alien crawl into my brain and fix my arm." Deep breaths, Dave. Wait, maybe not that deep. Shit. "Wait—new rule, though. Like for being in my head. The _only_ thing you can touch without permission is like, the panic button—if you can turn off pain you can set that to off, right? Keep the flashbacks 'n panic attacks under wraps for however long this takes?" 

" _Easssy._ " Their head cocks to one side, like they're thinking. Then, " _...maybe easssy. You might ssstill panic, becaussse you're not panicking. Humansss are ssstrange._ " 

"Yeah, dude, we totally are, but I'm gonna take that chance anyway, thanks." 

"No, you're not—" 

"Again, Rose, zip it." You take a deep breath (not deep enough to trip the bits of your brain that say you should be hoarding that oxygen and getting more, just enough to steady yourself) and shift away from Hal, kneeling a few feet away from Venom and holding out your hands. "C'mon, dude. Let's get this show on the road." 

" _Withhh pleasssure._ " 

And the symbiote recedes, leaves Eddie there with what looks like slick black gloves, and just like the first time you did this, you know exactly what's coming. This time, though, he reaches for your hands and doesn't quite touch and the slime flows from his skin to yours like liquid mercury rather than cold maple syrup, and it's somehow _better_ —there's no waiting to fuck you up. 

Before you can even start to gear up to that disastrous panic, the symbiote is under your skin and headed for your brain.


	4. Chapter 4

All three of your siblings take turns scolding you for the next ten minutes or so. You guess you should have expected that...but hey, none of them call you out for tuning out the harangue. And Dirk, at least, knows you're not paying attention; you see the moment his eyes flick from your face to where your hands're absently fluffing through Neet's throat ruff, when he realizes that you're not totally focused on anything external. 

He doesn't say a thing, though. Maybe nudges Rose before she can ask you if you're listening to her, saving you the decision of whether to try to lie convincingly or tell the truth in a diplomatic way. (Or take the third option: dropping out of normal time and focusing on what the symbiote's doing to you.) 

It's doing it slow, but you can still feel it. You've got a lot of little hurts most of the time; even without taking old injuries into account, you have a habit of ending up with lil' shit that doesn't always trip the threshold for your healing abilities. That's all disappearing, little points of pain switching themselves off one by one like stars going out at dawn. 

For all the relief that shit brings, it's still unsettling. Well, it is for a minute, anyway; then the symbiote touches something else, and the anxiety dissipates before you actually have time to start to snowball up to anything worse. It's kinda surprising, actually...all you feel is, like, relief? Maybe relief? 

Weird. 

_**Not really.**_

See, not feeling even a lil' shaky at the voice in your head? That's weird. 

_**Humans are weird. That specific emotion still makes sense.**_

Right, because the alien totally knows how human emotions work. Does the thing even _have_ emotions? 

_**We do! We have**_ **Eddie _to pass on new emotions. And other humans sometimes, but mostly Eddie._**

Damn. The wave of...fuck, _affection_ ain't strong enough of a word. You're not sure _love_ is either, not really. It really hammers in the fact that Hal wasn't joking when he called the symbiote "Eddie's alien husband." 

_**He's ours. We're his. Bonding with you, with others, is different. Less. He's**_ **ours.**

_So_ much love. Jesus fuck. You don't know whether to be confused, intimidated, jealous. All of it at once. 

Wait, you forgot to say any of that out loud. Dammit...

A not-even-slightly human chuckle ripples through your head. (Again, weird.) _**You're doing better.**_

"Yeah, but how much of that is you?" Hey, you just shut Rose and Hal up, which Dirk's been trying to do since they started arguing with each other a couple minutes back. Eddie's the only one who doesn't look surprised at you actually saying something—or at least more surprised than he always does. Or maybe the words you're looking for here is "confused." He still looks confused and mildly concerned; you wonder if that's got something to do with you having his soulmate fucking around in your head. Like, you're not sure that you could actually do anything to hurt the symbiote, but—

_**You could. Adrenaline, electricity, other things.**_ A thread of worry trickles through your chest for a second; then it's gone again. It wasn't yours, anyway. _**Don't.**_

"I'm not gonna hurt you. You hear that, Dirk?" 

"Dave, please think about what you're asking for one goddamn minute." 

Ooh, that's fair. "No zappy shit; the slime's got some issue with it. You gotta just wait for me to get my shit together." 

Eddie's eyes widen as he realizes that up until now, no one actually pointed that out, but Dirk's already nodding. "Makes sense. How're you doing with the goo, anyway?" 

"Huh." You don't even _need_ to give yourself a mental once-over. "I mean, the last time I was in this little pain was when I was on, like, morphine—" 

"For the _last_ time, they did _not_ put you on morphine at the hospital that time, Dave—" 

"Felt like they did." You give Rose a cheesy smile, like you're not continuing this argument solely to give her another source for her exasperation. "I didn't feel _shit_ , they coulda stuck a knife in me and I'd have been happy—" 

"You had bone sticking out of your leg, Dave. They gave you a spinal blocker and your healing factor temporarily wiped out anything higher up that would have hurt." 

"Nah, it was morphine." While she's still fuming over your idiocy, you get to your feet (oh _shit_ that's noticeably easier when nothing hurts) and reach up to coax Neet off your shoulder and onto your wrist, holding her out to Dirk. "You're on corvidsitting duty. C'mon, y'all, let's go break my arm."

* * *

Eddie does it, in the downstairs bathroom because the best first aid kit's in there. Hal's in the hall, a lookout in case Wade or D come home earlier than expected; Dirk's still upstairs with Neet; Rose is perched on the edge of the tub, watching as you lean against the counter with Eddie behind you, pulling your arm up at an angle that's unpleasantly familiar from training sessions with Bro. 

Yes, you are thinking about that. The symbiote's twining around the memories, squashing the emotions that should come along with them, but you know it's starting to have to struggle to keep everything under wraps. 

**_Sorry._**

"Nah." Unclench your teeth unclench your teeth unclench your _teeth._ "This ain't gonna hurt, so you're good. You're doing just fuckin' great, I can't feel a thing—" 

Eddie twists up, pulling your wrist up towards your shoulderblades, further than it can go naturally. You still don't _feel_ anything beyond a weird sense of pressure, but you _hear_ a distinct double snap. 

Rose gags, and very obviously tries to muffle it. Fuck, you really hope Eddie doesn't need her to help get your arm set...

* * *

He doesn't. It's fine. Twenty minutes later your arm's in a splint and you're on the couch, extremely pleased with yourself. You probably _shouldn't_ be pleased with yourself for the random thought that if the symbiote can adjust your brain chemistry directly it could probably get you super fucking high without any of the substances normally required, but hey, it was a fortunate thought. 

Also you're kind of super fucking high right now and apparently part of that is being extremely pleased with yourself. Or maybe the goo just decided to flip all the "extremely pleased" switches and call it a day. Whatever; you're just gonna enjoy it until somebody comes to check on you. 

Or maybe you'll take a nap. Yeah, you'll take a nap...

* * *

"Dave." 

You are immediately and fully awake when Wade says your name, eyes snapping open to look up at him. He's standing over the couch, mask off so you can see the curious look on his face; for a second the symbiote coils in your head like it's about to engage some kinda defensive measures against him; was it asleep too? "Hiya." 

"...what did you do to your arm, and how much trouble are we in with D?" 

Hmm. Truth? Lie? You should probably lie. Nah, that's too much trouble. "Venom's doing some maintenance. It's fine." 

"Every word of that is super alarming. You know that, right? Like taken separately? Vaguely confusing. As a sentence? Possibly horrifying." Wade rolls his eyes and plops down on the end of the couch as you sit up, just barely missing your feet. "Venom broke your arm?" 

"Eddie broke my arm. The goo's fixing it." How to get him off this topic...ah, you know. "Neet's like five percent alien." 

It works. "She's _what_? Neet, like Nietzsche." 

"Yep." 

"As in your crow, not the dead philosopher." 

"Yeah, that one. The symbiote says she's part flerken." 

You don't think you've ever made Wade _splutter_ before, but that definitely does the trick. Somewhere in the center of your head, the symbiote laughs. 

Even though it's not keeping a handle on your emotions anymore, the panic you expect doesn't come. Maybe there's something to this kind of therapy after all.

Weird.


End file.
